The HEI Core Center for Hearing Research aims to support and facilitate research, foster collaborations and set new research directions in the following two areas: 1) engineering, and 2) imaging/morphology. Core B: Engineering - The Engineering Core will develop and maintain expertise in rapidly changing technologies to support new and innovative enabling technologies for scientific applications: digital signal processing (DSP), communication interfaces, and controllers. The Core will also interact with project-specific engineers to provide core hardware and software components in these areas for integration into research projects. Core C: Imaging and Morphology - aims to provide state-of-the-art, intravital imaging, morphology and microscopy services and training to HEI scientists. Such services include inspection and maintenance of all imaging equipment, image storage and analysis, morphometry and training. The addition of a histology technician will help towards the achievement of this objective. The addition of a full time confocal technician is particularly important since we are in the process of purchasing two new Laser Scanning Confocal microscopes with increased functionality to replace the one we originally purchased 10 years ago. The Core will perform inspection and maintenance of all imaging and tissue processing equipment. The Core will also encourage collaboration and dissemination of information about advances in the field of imaging. Core B Engineering Core Director: Robert Shannon, Ph.D. DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The HEI Engineering core provides highly technical engineering expertise to enable cutting edge technical solutions to practical problems faced by a diverse array of scientists. Engineering solutions are episodic in nature, requiring several months of highly skilled engineering expertise, but only infrequently. Individual Investigators generally do not have sufficient engineering needs on a continuing basis to justify full-time engineering personnel. The Engineering Core will maintain expertise in rapidly changing technologies to support new and innovative enabling technologies for scientific applications. Modern auditory research involving auditory prostheses and hearing assessment systems depends heavily on real-time processing of digital information. The engineering core will maintain expertise in real time digital signal processing (DSP) hardware and software (Aim 1). The engineering core will develop and maintain expertise on the communication interfaces such as USB and IEEE 1394 with host computers and specialized hardware/software platforms for laboratory instrumentation (Aim 2). Many experimental applications require precise triggering and coordination of multiple pieces of equipment, on time scales as short as microseconds and for spatial resolution of image data in the micron range. The engineering core will develop and maintain hardware and software to allow precision control of diverse equipment (Aim 3).